If Obama Were Like Republican Governors

Steve M. finds yet another way to describe the failure of Democrats to wield power effectively:

When you look at the insane things in some of the Year Zero bills in newly Republican states -- the privatization of power plants by fiat in the Wisconsin "budget repair" bill, or the dissolution of local governments permitted in a bill that could soon be headed for the desk of Michigan governor Rick Snyder -- you'd have to go much further to imagine analogous acts by President Obama in his first days in office.

At the very least, we needed a stimulus that made up for a $2.9 trillion shortfall in economic activity, as Paul Krugman argued all along -- though, since we're imagining proposals that are analogous to what Republicans are doing right now, I suppose we should have gone for $50 trillion, as this guy recommended.

A Democrat analogous to Walker/Scott/Kasich/Snyder would have slapped handcuffs on dozens of bankers in the first hundred days; he'd have broken up the banks and restored Glass-Steagall. He and fellow Democrats would have repealed the Bush tax cuts on the rich by Groundhog Day '09, and would then begin restoring Clinton -- or even Reagan, or pre-Reagan -- tax rates on the wealthy. (And, of course, the economic team would be heavy on folks like Reich and Krugman and Warren, rather than Geithner and Summers.)

I could go on. For example, regarding Gitmo, the prisoners who were to be tried stateside would have been flown to the U.S. in the dead of night and shipped to Supermax prisons before any wingnut crybaby knew what was going on.

None of this could have happened, of course, because the Democrats we elect don't believe in doing this stuff, don't have the guts to do it, or both. But it would be analogous.

Read the whole thing.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?